I'll just make this clear now.
Those stats aren't real-time, nor are those numbers an accurate reflection of the queue - it's a sum of all the file type queues (including editorial and leftover logos) and processes through the system.

I understand. The fact that the numbers have gone up from 73,000 to 112,000 in an extremely short time-frame is, perhaps, co-incidental?

I'll just make this clear now.
Those stats aren't real-time, nor are those numbers an accurate reflection of the queue - it's a sum of all the file type queues (including editorial and leftover logos) and processes through the system.

I understand. The fact that the numbers have gone up from 73,000 to 112,000 in an extremely short time-frame is, perhaps, co-incidental?

Hmm, let's see. Upload limits have been removed, all those contributors with big backlogs to upload, but not enough available slots, will be free to clear their backlogs. Number of files in the queue will increase literally overnight. Once these backlogged files get through (one way or another) everything will go back to normal, probably with a slight increase in the size of the queue. Always considering if those figures have any meaning in real-time.

You know what's nice... I'm uploading abour 30 images / week on other agencies and have a huge load of images waiting to be uploaded here and THAT'S the moment where I'll be uploading a bit around 999 images this week

I see a lot of doom and gloom here but lets be realistic and reasonable. Very few people if any are constant enough to fill the previous levels this is just symbolic there will be no real flood of images coming to degrade the quality.

I have never filled the upload limits except maybe on video when they were about 50 because I had a very productive week, otherwise have never felt limited.

Another aspect on the newsletter was the rejection number going down for small issues.

Flat Dull colors IMO opinion is over abused and not really true in many cases. When colors are close to over saturation and a histogram is perfectly exposed you really can't improve the lighting conditions of a scene. The Technicolor oversaturated look is not how the real world looks like and I wish the inspection system had the real character of light in world when looking at a file. Studio images are another ball game, I am talking outdoor images.

Over saturating colors make files less usable for print and editing by the clients, detail can be lost and gamuts blown out. It's sad that the true character of a scene is taken away in order to have a punchy rainbowy image. Many inspectors understand this very well and can have a better sense of the real world scene but others might need some real world light shades on. Histograms are digital truth, the subjective aspect of how our brains interpret color is not. We don't all see colors the same hence why we should rely on technical indicators before calling something dull and flat.

Really disappointed to hear this news... We have worked hard and inspected hard in all the years gone by to have the best quality images of the micros. why compete on quantity now after all the hard work is already done.

Quality is our USP (unique selling point) and this is what Istock should promote to buyers. Madness to want to compete on number of files in collection, that can only provide short term sales/profit and will jepodize long term success and will guarantee price reduction as the only future way to increase sales.

Ha. And I thought the number 999 was a typo...Now I know, but now I'm stressed (even though I am happy for the limit increase) since I felt like a failure keeping up with the lower limits before Happy but a bit stressed. Oddly, it has motivated me more. I will now ignore my family for the next month...

[snip]
Another aspect on the newsletter was the rejection number going down for small issues.

Flat Dull colors IMO opinion is over abused and not really true in many cases. When colors are close to over saturation and a histogram is perfectly exposed you really can't improve the lighting conditions of a scene. The Technicolor oversaturated look is not how the real world looks like and I wish the inspection system had the real character of light in world when looking at a file. Studio images are another ball game, I am talking outdoor images.
[/snip]

Well to be fair, if the colours are dull and flat you're more than likely taking the photo at the wrong time of day. We have more control over outdoor lighting than we give ourselves credit for, it just takes patience waiting for it to look good. Of course this isn't true all the time but for a majority of poorly lit images that are uploaded it's bad timing.

I'm with jamesbenet. If your image has a full histogram with no excessive clipping of highlights and shadows I really can't see how an outdoor image can be improved. When I shoot outdoors I always carefully scout the location and fully asses the lighting at all times of day and then plan my shoots accordingly to get the best natural ambient light available for that subject matter. I often return to the same location numerous times (at different times of the day and under differnet weather conditions or in different seasons) to ensure I have the best light to suit the mood of my concept/subject - so I am very meticulous in my planning and patient in my exectution.

iStock finally appear to be catching up to what commerical clients have been requesting for years and asking for less-stocky images (shot under a variety of natural light that is unique to the location) but that still doesn't seem to be filtering onto the inspection process. No-resubmit rejections for very subjective lighting assements are still too common (and I would argue are even more frequent these days - I at least used to have the option to tweak and resubmit most of these rejections in the past) so simply removing upload limits will not encourage me to suddenly submit more images that I know have a high chance of rejection (these images will do me no good held captive in my rejection history here - they're even more valuable if they stay stuck my hard drive).

I too feel that lighting rejectiions with no resubmit are far too often these days when it is still a good image of the scene as it happened. It is real and looks real, no serios problem with the histogram, period. The right time of day is fine in a scenic, but not always possible if your subject is something else and it's now or never.

Posted By RyersonClark:
I too feel that lighting rejectiions with no resubmit are far too often these days when it is still a good image of the scene as it happened. It is real and looks real, no serios problem with the histogram, period. The right time of day is fine in a scenic, but not always possible if your subject is something else and it's now or never.

Ditto! I also feel like the inspectors often use this rejection as a catch all if they just don't care for an image. It's too broad of an excuse - they really should narrow it down with check boxes so we know which problem it is. The no resubmit is definitely annoying - why not give the image a 2nd chance to be "fixed"?

While I understand the reasons behind scouting out locations at various times of the day in different conditions sometimes it's not possible. Perhaps you are an event that is only happening for 3 or 4 hours on 1 day. That doesn't leave a whole lot of options for lighting variety. Maybe it's a landscape on a foggy morning or during a snowstorm. Not much one can do to alter circumstances or to return at a different time. When it's winter and it's snowing and everything is already gray outside and there's not a whole lot of light to start with then of course the lighting could be considered dull & flat. But if that's how it really looks then that's how it really looks. I will often go out on foggy mornings or during snowstorms to look for unusal spots to photograph - but I rarely submit them here because the inspectors usually kill them with the lighting rejection.

There are some interesting points being made but these comments caught my attention. I think I identify with the sense of frustration, as I've had my fair share of rejections, but I have a different outlook on a lot of them now.

Posted By LeeAnnWhite:

While I understand the reasons behind scouting out locations at various times of the day in different conditions sometimes it's not possible.

There are websites and apps that can help us find out the best angles and where the sun will be in a certain place, even Google Maps can help us to plan what to visit and at what time of the day to ensure the light is where we need it to be. However, it is important to note that not every minute of every day in every location is going to have lighting suitable for creating high quality stock photos with commercial appeal.

Posted By LeeAnnWhite:
Perhaps you are an event that is only happening for 3 or 4 hours on 1 day. That doesn't leave a whole lot of options for lighting variety. Maybe it's a landscape on a foggy morning or during a snowstorm. Not much one can do to alter circumstances or to return at a different time.

What I believe we should do at times like that is that we should take snapshots for our own albums / Facebook etc rather than bothering the inspectors with them. We've all got photos of that beautiful, quaint mountain village where the coach tour pulled over for an hour, but where the sky was unfortunately just horizon to horizon flat grey cloud, leaving a blown out white horror-show above the beautiful architecture etc. Photographically, I tend to follow this rule most of the time: If it's sunny, shoot landscapes, if it's cloudy, shoot people. When I say landscapes, I don't just strictly mean mountains & streams, I'm talking about things that include architecture too.

Posted By LeeAnnWhite:
When it's winter and it's snowing and everything is already gray outside and there's not a whole lot of light to start with then of course the lighting could be considered dull & flat. But if that's how it really looks then that's how it really looks.

Extremes in weather or lighting are good. If you can make a feature of how awful the weather is or how flat the light is, like say on a misty morning overlooking some stark landscape, then that may look ok and work well for a stock image, but again, we are in the business of supplying stock imagery with commercial appeal.

This is creative stock photography, nobody cares what anywhere really looked like on that day. We are creating an illusion of a place. We start editing the moment we put the viewfinder to out eye and start framing the shot, deciding to miss out the ugly bins in the foreground or whatever. We spend countless hours cloning out blurs of birds in the sky, removing burglar alarm boxes from thatched cottages and removing telephone cables and pigeon poop from the facades of beautiful Victorian buildings etc It's about creating an image that people want to buy, not about faithfully capturing the god awful flat light that we are unlucky enough to be stuck with on any given day, when we venture out to somewhere interesting that we hoped would look nice.

I think if we are shooting somewhere truly unique or capturing some amazing one off event, then the inspectors do generally recognise that rarity and they accept images with lighting flaws. If it's just a run of the mill landscape of nowhere in particular on a day with indifferent lighting, then I hope they will continue to apply the standards that they have done in the recent past.

We've all had rejections that we've disagreed with, but I'd say that I agree with more than 90% of my own rejections, when I look back at them now. I am glad I have been forced by the inspectors to confront my old lazy assumptions that my work was good enough, glad that I have had to improve my technical and artistic skills and very glad I didn't just have poorly lit images of mine accepted simply because "that's how it looked", otherwise I would have never improved. If taking great photos in available light was easy, then the great landscape photographers would not always be getting up at 4am to capture a scene in all its glory. We shouldn't just roll up somewhere pretty at lunchtime, take a few shots, complain that it's clouded over or that the shadows are in the wrong place and blame the inspectors for not accepting it.

Posted By kelvinjay:
There are some interesting points being made but these comments caught my attention. I think I identify with the sense of frustration, as I've had my fair share of rejections, but I have a different outlook on a lot of them now.

Posted By LeeAnnWhite:

While I understand the reasons behind scouting out locations at various times of the day in different conditions sometimes it's not possible.

There are websites and apps that can help us find out the best angles and where the sun will be in a certain place, even Google Maps can help us to plan what to visit and at what time of the day to ensure the light is where we need it to be. However, it is important to note that not every minute of every day in every location is going to have lighting suitable for creating high quality stock photos with commercial appeal.

Posted By LeeAnnWhite:
Perhaps you are an event that is only happening for 3 or 4 hours on 1 day. That doesn't leave a whole lot of options for lighting variety. Maybe it's a landscape on a foggy morning or during a snowstorm. Not much one can do to alter circumstances or to return at a different time.

What I believe we should do at times like that is that we should take snapshots for our own albums / Facebook etc rather than bothering the inspectors with them. We've all got photos of that beautiful, quaint mountain village where the coach tour pulled over for an hour, but where the sky was unfortunately just horizon to horizon flat grey cloud, leaving a blown out white horror-show above the beautiful architecture etc. Photographically, I tend to follow this rule most of the time: If it's sunny, shoot landscapes, if it's cloudy, shoot people.

Posted By LeeAnnWhite:
When it's winter and it's snowing and everything is already gray outside and there's not a whole lot of light to start with then of course the lighting could be considered dull & flat. But if that's how it really looks then that's how it really looks.

Extremes in weather or lighting are good. If you can make a feature of how awful the weather is or how flat the light is, like say on a misty morning overlooking some stark landscape, then that may look ok and work well for a stock image, but again, we are in the business of supplying stock imagery with commercial appeal.

This is creative stock photography, nobody cares what anywhere really looked like on that day. We are creating an illusion of a place. We start editing the moment we put the viewfinder to out eye and start framing the shot, deciding to miss out the ugly bins in the foreground or whatever. We spend countless hours cloning out blurs of birds in the sky, removing burglar alarm boxes from thatched cottages and removing telephone cables and pigeon poop from the facades of beautiful Victorian buildings etc It's about creating an image that people want to buy, not about faithfully capturing the god awful flat light that we are unlucky enough to be stuck with on any given day, when we venture out to somewhere interesting that we hoped would look nice.

I think if we are shooting somewhere truly unique or capturing some amazing one off event, then the inspectors do generally recognise that rarity and they accept images with lighting flaws. If it's just a run of the mill landscape of nowhere in particular on a day with indifferent lighting, then I hope they will continue to apply the standards that they have done in the recent past.

We've all had rejections that we've disagreed with, but I'd say that I agree with more than 90% of my own rejections, when I look back at them now. I am glad I have been forced by the inspectors to confront my old lazy assumptions that my work was good enough, glad that I have had to improve my technical and artistic skills and very glad I didn't just have poorly lit images of mine accepted simply because "that's how it looked", otherwise I would have never improved. If taking great photos in available light was easy, then the great landscape photographers would not always be getting up at 4am to capture a scene in all its glory. We shouldn't just roll up somewhere pretty at lunchtime, take a few shots, complain that it's clouded over or that the shadows are in the wrong place and blame the inspectors for not accepting it.

Well, that's my personal take on it anyway.

(Edited on 2013-04-28 08:09:13 by kelvinjay)

Good points. What about the rejections I've seen increase lately for macro images taken under "dull, flat lighting" conditions....the best conditions for showing the fine details and patterns in particular subjects? To shoot that kind of subject in sidelight or harsh direct light would be a mistake.